A few years ago Dallas Clayton wrote “An Awesome Book” to teach his son the importance of dreams and dreaming big! After several publishers passed on the book, he published it himself and put it online for free. The Internet went crazy, orders came pouring in, and Dallas set out on an epic book tour. He travelled all over the world, donating copies for every copy that was sold. You may have seen the Google commercial about him! (See here.)

He wanted to change kids’ lives and ended up completely changing his own. The book became so popular Harper Collins asked to re-release it. His second book “An Awesome Book of Thanks” was the first kid’s picture book to be published by Amazon. He wrote a third book “An Awesome Book of Love”, and has just released his fourth, a collection of poetry called “Make Magic! Do Good!”.

Dallas’ energy is infectious, and his emails always get me pumped. It’s downright impossible not to be excited if you talk to him on the phone. Hopefully some of that comes through in this little interview with the man I consider to be this generation’s Shel Silverstein.

Last week I got an early Christmas present from my friends at Chronicle Books. They’re starting a holiday campaign called #GiveBooks, and asked if I wanted to pick myself any 10 books from their archives! Lucky me right? Well, lucky you too because I also get to send all 10 books to one of you! How does that sound?